Aspects of this disclosure relate to varying technical fields including electronic cinematography, motion and geometry capture for computer graphics and gesture recognition, three-dimensional image-based environment mapping, virtual reality, and augmented reality. However, none of these fields can be said to encompass the entirety of the disclosed systems and methods. The common thread of these variant disciplines is that they require, at least to a certain degree, a system for capturing electromagnetic data regarding the geometry of, and possibly the appearance of, a physical space, and optionally data regarding a scene that plays out within that physical space. As used herein, the term physical space includes actors and movable items within a locale, and is not meant to be limited to a locale as defined by the fixed items therein. Furthermore, as used herein, the movement or other action by those actors or movable items within the physical space may define the scene.
Tools that have been used for the purpose of capturing data regarding a physical space, and scene within that space, include various sensors, such as high definition video cameras or arrays thereof, that are used to obtain digital information regarding a given environment. For example, free viewpoint video capture systems utilize an array of cameras to create a navigable model of a captured scene, so that the scene can be viewed from any angle once it has been captured. The data capture is also sometimes aided via the introduction of fiducials to the environment that are used by computer vision algorithms to model the geometry of a physical space or the movement of items within it.